He stepped out toward the bars that were celling in his balcony, the view yawning wider. Standing here gave him a vantage, however slight, to see part of the massive building in which he was imprisoned. From what he could make out, it looked to be a rambling stone-and-wood chalet. Above one of the visible A-frames to his right, black smoke poured from a stone chimney. Gauging the distance to the ground and then to the eaves, he guessed he was on the third of four floors.

Movement caught his eye below. Two men wearing night-vision goggles jogged into view, hunched against the cold, Doberman pinschers at their sides. Evan made a mental note of each man’s build, posture, and gait before they disappeared into a bright red barn a quarter mile away from the house.

He thought, Two dogs, two guards, and counting.

The rolling barn door boomed shut, and then the gray diorama beyond the balcony reclaimed the same desolate quality it had before. Evan swept his gaze up the looming rise of the valley but saw only trees and more trees, not a single other residence in sight.

Who wanted him badly enough to stage such an elaborate snatch? Who had the resources, the operational skill?

Charles Van Sciver and the remaining Orphans, certainly, but this didn’t seem to match their modus operandi. Van Sciver would have little interest in keeping Evan comfortable, let alone in luxury.

Over the years Evan had killed a lot of people, disrupted innumerable operations, and left behind countless mourning relatives. Was this the work of a tribal warlord bent on vengeance? A Saudi billionaire with a jihadi son whom Evan had dispatched? Or maybe a foreign agency wanting to come to terms with a lost U.S. asset?

Judging by the accommodations, they planned for him to be kept.

For what?

It dawned on him that he was shivering, so he stepped back inside and secured the door. He gave the walls and ceiling beams a quick scan, deciding where he would place security cameras if the equation were flipped. He walked around so he could watch the light strike the surfaces at different angles. A dot-size glint caught his eye in a heating vent out of reach on the sloped ceiling. Okay, then. That gave them a view of roughly half the room, including the door leading to the hallway. He searched for where additional pinpoint cameras might fill out the picture. A crack in the doorframe above the bathroom looked promising. If it were up to him, he’d have sunk something in the caulking between the travertine tiles of the hearth as well.

He was just starting to consider how the bathroom might be wired when he heard the knock at the door.

9. Our Lady of Holy Death

9

Our Lady of Holy Death